And the Polls Say
by PeachLaundryMachine
Summary: You work for a polling firm in Manhattan, and a controversial poll you put out may have gotten your best friend murdered. Can Olivia provide some comfort, and perhaps understand in a way you never thought possible? Set in 1999.
1. Chapter 1

**it's ambiguously 1999. probably a s1/s2 hybrid. **

Too bright, was Mariana's first thought upon waking up. The buzzing fluorescent lights meant she had to be in the basement storage room of her office, but why? She sat up, blinking, feeling an intense pounding at the back of her head. Pulling her hand away after touching it, wincing, Mariana saw that her fingers were covered in blood. She felt a panic rising in her chest and tried to stand up, to yell, but before she could get a word out she noticed that her pants were unzipped and her underwear pushed to the side. No, Mariana thought. Please, no, no no no no.

The walls felt like they were closing in, the ground unsteady. Mariana pushed herself to her feet, taking a shaky breath. She looked at her watch: 2:47. No one would be in the office for hours. She leaned against a wall of the storage room, then slid down until she was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees, completely numb. Then – darkness.

She stayed in this position until an intern found her the next morning, hunting for a box of paperwork that was certainly unlabeled, would take an hour to find, and would probably be entirely useless to the project anyway – it was probably just as useful as all the coffee runs and fixing the printer when it jammed; that is to say, negligible.

The intern reached to flip on the lights, only to realize that they were already flickering brightly. Upon hearing footsteps, Mariana blinked a bit and groaned softly.

"Oh my God, Mariana? Are you okay? What happened? Should I call the police? Who did this?" The questions came flying.

Mariana's head only flopped to the side, eyes fluttering shut again.

...

I had just settled in at the office and was digging around in my desk drawer for a pen when our intern Tori came tearing into the room, reaching for my phone. "Whoa, hon, where's the fire?" I asked, making a mental note to take Tori out for dinner sometime soon, or at least give her something a little more substantial to do.

But Tori was already dialing. "It's – it's Mariana – she – I need to call the police – I think she was attacked –"

"Where?" I stood up.

"Basement," Tori choked out just as the operator picked up on the other end.

I sprinted to the stairs. "Mariana! Mariana!"

She was unconscious when I saw her, bleeding from the back of her head, clothes awry. Disgust rose up in my throat. Please, not Mariana. The tears started to form even as a horrible thought crept into my mind. Don't let them think you're anything other than colleagues, I warned myself. They'll have too many questions, and you need this job. I hated myself for thinking it, and I hated even more that I had to.

Minutes later, the paramedics and two officers burst into the office.

"Special Victims Unit," one said. "I'm Detective Stabler; this is my partner, Detective Benson. Who made the 911 call?"

Tori raised her hand shakily. "I did," she whispered. I squeezed her shoulder.

"Okay, can you take a ride with me to the precinct and tell me what happened?" he asked, as the paramedics took Mariana out on a stretcher behind them.

She nodded.

The woman, Detective Benson, turned to the rest of us. "Would you all mind coming along as well?" she asked.

I looked at my colleagues. "Can we go along to the hospital?"

Detective Benson nodded. "We can do the interviews there," she agreed. "One of you ride along in the ambulance with me."

"Go," my colleagues said, gesturing to me. I didn't analyze this. She's your project partner, I repeated in my head, interspersed with please, God, and I'm so sorry and let her be okay.

I climbed into the back of the ambulance with Detective Benson and grasped Mariana's hand. "Please stay with me, baby," I pleaded, but Mariana didn't regain consciousness.

I think I lost myself for a moment, stroking Mariana's hand. Briefly, I saw Detective Benson's eyes register what was in front of her – taking in Mariana's masculine dress and short haircut, the look on my face, probably, and my lack of mention of a husband or boyfriend I needed to notify. She opened her mouth to say something, but I caught her eye and she closed it again.

"So you didn't see anything personally?" Detective Benson asked me.

"No, I'm sorry," I responded. "She normally arrives after I do, so I didn't think anything until Tori told me what she'd seen in the basement."

"And was she still here when you left the office last night?"

"Yeah," I said slowly. "She wanted to make sure that one of the polls we had put into the field had started off successfully."

She nodded. "So what is it that you do here, exactly?"

"We're a polling firm," I explained. "Mariana and I are the co-directors of the Manhattan office, and we poll different current events and political issues to see where people stand on them."

She nods. "Do you have any idea who would do something like this?"

I shook my head. "No. But, Detective Benson?" I took a deep breath. She won't mind, I thought. Especially if it helps us find the guy who did this.

She smiled a little. "Olivia."

Olivia. I thought briefly of the irony that people often mistook my own name for hers upon reading it quickly, before returning to the conversation.

"There was this interview –" I began, but the ambulance skidded to a stop and one of the paramedics yanked the doors open.

The next thing I knew, Olivia and I were running into the hospital behind Mariana on her stretcher.

Olivia and her partner, Elliot, sat with us in the waiting room asking about what had happened last night. Tori was crying, and I felt awful. The rest of my coworkers looked almost no better. After a bit, Olivia pulled me aside. "You mentioned an interview," she said quietly. "Can you tell me about that?"

I nodded. Here goes nothing. "Um, a couple of weeks ago Mariana and I put out a new poll, and she was interviewed on a local news station talking about it," I said.

"And someone got angry?" Olivia asked. "What was the poll?"

"It was about same-sex relationships in New York," I said. I saw a flicker in Olivia's eye, perhaps a confirmation that she'd been right – she wasn't, but I figured it wouldn't even matter if this got out -we'd be crucified in the press anyway. "Mariana said to me, 'Come on, it's not the 80's anymore. It's 1999. People are getting it.' She was always the optimistic one."

"So you think this was an attack on her sexuality," Olivia said. She paused, took a breath. "Mariana was gay, right?"

I nodded carefully, slowly. "After the poll came out, Mariana did the interview, and she talked about how 48% of New Yorkers now support homosexuality," I said. "She said it was an improvement from previous polls our company had done – that it was a real win for the community. I told her to be careful, but soon after the interview aired she started getting hate mail. At the office, at home…the news station got some too for having her on…I always told her that the world wasn't as nice as she thought it was but she really thought she could change their minds, you know?"

Olivia's eyes got big and watery. I momentarily wondered why – surely, she interviewed witnesses for more horrific cases than this one, as gut-wrenching as it was for me personally.

"We're going to need all of that mail," she said, catching herself and taking a quick breath.

"Of course," I said. "Whatever you need."

The detectives left, and my coworkers and I sat in stunned silence in the hospital waiting room. Tori got us all coffee, and the gesture almost made me cry again. She handed me mine, looking me straight in the eye.

"You know you're good for more than just coffee runs, right?" I said.

Tori smiled. "I know. It's okay. I promise."

I sipped my coffee, stomach still churning, and Tori kept an eye on me.

"Hey," she said slowly. "I know – I know I'm just an intern, and everything, but if you, you know, want to talk about it or anything…"

I nodded. "Thanks, Tori, that's…really sweet," I said, but suddenly one of the doctors reappeared in the room. He couldn't meet my gaze. I stood to meet him, Tori still by my side.

"Is she –" I couldn't finish the sentence.

"I'm really sorry," the doctor said, sounding sincere, but really he must say this kind of thing every day, "she didn't make it. The bleeding reached her brain, and…there wasn't anything we could do. I'm so sorry."

I squeezed my eyes shut and nodded. "Okay."

"Does she have any family you'd like me to notify?" the doctor asked.

I thought of her parents, who hadn't spoken to her since she'd come out, and shook my head, thinking of the irony of her own family's reaction coupled with her unending optimism about the world – about how some day, maybe someday soon – people would change.

And maybe she was right.

But not yet.


	2. Chapter 2

Two days later, I and two of my male colleagues were at the 1-6 precinct helping the detectives sort through all the mail and phone calls Mariana had received about her appearance. While a Detective Tutuola ("call me Fin") were questioning us, the medical examiner came up to talk to Olivia.

"What do you have, Melinda?" she asked.

"We've got DNA left all over the body," the M.E. responded, "so if you get me a suspect, I can match him."

"Do you have any other ideas?" Fin asked me, somehow gently and urgently at once. So far, the search through the mail had been futile.

I pursed my lips. "There was this priest," I said finally, slowly.

"What priest?"

"Mariana really liked him," I said. "He preached at her church sometimes. He came to the taping of her interview. He always used to tell her he was praying for her – you know, pray the gay away and all that," I added.

Fin furrowed his brow. "Mariana went to church?"

I'd never thought this was weird, but hearing him ask, I could see how it might be.

"Yeah," I said. "I mean, I go, too. It means a lot to me, actually." My face burned suddenly – had I involuntarily revealed something?

Olivia, having tuned into our conversation, did the same thing she had in the ambulance – opened her mouth like she was going to speak and then closed it again, opting for a safer question, I assumed. Why was she letting me avoid the topic?

"But Mariana liked this priest?" Olivia asked finally.

"She thought he meant well. I mean, he was a sweet guy, really, just – didn't agree with her lifestyle, I guess. Or at least that's what Mariana thought."

"But you disagree."

"Yeah. I got a bit of a weird vibe from him. We were both at her interview, and he went up to her after. Kept complimenting how she looked, saying he'd pray for her like usual, but he had this vague look of disgust on his face, too, I think. Mariana never saw it. I know that's not a lot to go on."

Olivia didn't ask more. Her face showed understanding, compassion. As she wrote some notes in her notebook, I looked her up and down as discreetly as one possibly could. She had short chestnut-brown hair, wide-set, expressive eyes, and a button-down shirt that revealed nothing but framed her curves and muscles in a way that was just unfair. Stop, I admonished myself. Now's not the fucking time. But my eyes wouldn't leave. I wouldn't exactly call her butch, not in the way that Mariana was, but she gave off a strong, protective energy that was very similar.

My eyes filled with tears. Never again would Mariana protect me, tell me it was okay, compliment my hair, hold me after a bad day, take me for coffee when I thought no one in the world cared, take me to certain clubs when I was too scared to go alone, put a poll in the field that I was too afraid to know the answers to…

Olivia squeezed my hand. "Want to go for a walk?" she asked in a low voice. I noticed, or maybe not, her eyes doing the exact same thing mine had just moments ago, taking in my skirt and heels, acrylic nails…she's just sizing you up like she would any witness, I told myself, and anyway, you don't give off vibes. You like it that way, right?

I followed Olivia into the hallway. She placed her hand on the small of my back and walked me away from the bullpen. Fin followed her with his eyes, then turned to Elliot. I couldn't see exactly what he said but it looked as though his lips formed "you think?"

Out of earshot of the other detectives, Olivia murmured, "sorry about that."

I laughed halfheartedly. "That's okay," I said quietly.

Olivia looked me in the eye. "Were you and Mariana…together?" she asked gently, finally.

I took in a shallow breath. "No," I answered honestly.

Olivia's face heated up. "I'm sorry," she said, voice hardening. "Of course. She was your colleague…I didn't mean to imply that you were -" she turned slightly on her heels. "I should get back to –"

I tried to defend myself, but the words wouldn't come out.

For the rest of the afternoon, we remained in the precinct. I watched as Olivia worked tirelessly, tracking the remainder of the phone calls and looking for the priest.

"We need to get back to the office," my coworker Zachary said.

"You can't," Olivia said. "You all might be in danger, too." She looked at me as she said it.

"We'll send uniformed officers to your houses," Fin offered.

Olivia looked like she wanted to argue, but she didn't.

The next day, the uniformed officer at my apartment took me back to the precinct for a lineup – they had found the priest.

"ID'ing him as someone who harassed Mariana is enough to get a warrant for his DNA," explained Alex Cabot, SVU's lawyer.

I watched how close she stood to Olivia as they looked over my case file, heads bent together. No way, I told myself. No way. You're just reading way too much into this whole thing. Olivia's straight, and for now, you are too.

"Just tell me if you recognize any of these men," Ms. Cabot told me.

"Number four," I told her quickly. "That's the priest that harassed Mariana at her TV appearance. Father Matthew."

Alex smiled. "Got him."

"We're going to get this guy," Olivia told me. Her tone had warmed a bit since the day before, but not much.

"I hope so," I said.

By then, Alex was approaching Fin to collect Father Matthew's DNA.

"I don't want to see him yet," I said. "I know I might have to testify in court, but…"

"It's okay," Olivia said. "I get it."

She emphasized the words.

I took a breath. "Detective Benson?"

"Hm?"

"About yesterday."

"It's okay. I promise."

"No, listen. I wasn't with Mariana. That part was true. But it doesn't mean…it doesn't mean you were wrong."

She nodded, said nothing.

I sat alone in my apartment that night, feeling marginally safer that Father Matthew had been apprehended, but feeling Mariana's absence acutely.

Around ten that evening, my mother called.

"Hi, Mom," I said wearily.

"Why didn't you call me straight away?" she yelled into the phone. "I have to find out on the news that your office was attacked?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "I was running around, at the hospital, the police station –"

She softened a little. "Are you safe?" she asked.

"Yeah, they caught the guy," I replied.

"Now, don't get angry for what I'm about to say next," she started.

"Mom, please, not now," I begged.

"I'm serious! This is a tragedy," she said, "but we all know why it happened! I'm just warning you to be careful."

"I'm not gay, Mom," I sighed, letting the familiar words tumble from my mouth.

"Okay," she huffed, "good, because I want you to be happy, okay?"

"My best friend died!" I yelled.

"She wasn't happy," Mom said.

"She was fucking murdered!"

"Honey, I'm obviously saying the wrong thing here," she said, frustrated. "I'm sad for you, I really am. It's horrible, the loss of a friend. All I'm saying is that –"

I hung up the phone.

The next day, after pretty much a full day of crying, the phone rang again around five.

"DNA was a match!" Olivia said, voice brighter than the day before. "This probably won't even go to trial."

"That's…that's great!" I said, "so, he's guilty?"

"Yep. Alex will plead him out."

"Good," I said. I hesitated. "Olivia?"

"Listen," she said. "Before you speak, I'm…sorry. I shouldn't have assumed anything. I…shouldn't have thought of you that way during a case."

My mind started whirring. This is wrong, this is wrong, I thought. But when will you get another chance? If you say no now, she'll move on. Take another case. You'll be forgotten in three days. This is fucking wrong. But sometimes the circumstances are just fucking wrong -

"You should've," I whispered, barely aloud.

Olivia paused. "Get a drink with me tonight?"

"Sure," I choked out. "I'd love to."


	3. Chapter 3

We got a few drinks from my favorite bar. Josh, the bartender, raised his eyebrows when he saw me with Olivia (as a man and two women tried to buy her drinks), and I nodded back, equally as surprised. "Well, hey," he said, chuckling. He's one of the sweetest gay men I know, and before we got to Olivia, I asked him if he'd heard the news. Mariana and I often got drinks here Friday after work, and he knew her well.

His face suddenly fell. "I hadn't heard," he whispered. "I'm so so sorry, love. She'll be incredibly missed."

I nodded. I didn't think Olivia had been listening, but she gave my hand a reassuring squeeze, and the lump in my throat lessened a modicum.

We stayed at the bar until around 12, mostly talking, dancing just a little, but keeping hands to ourselves. I wondered why I was taking it so slowly. This was nominally a gay bar, though had become much less so over the past few years, and I was certainly devastated over Mariana, though this did seem just the perfect thing to take my mind off it, and even thinking that filled me with oceans of guilt, but on the other hand throwing away my chance with Olivia seemed equally as stupid.

But around midnight, Olivia asked hesitantly, "would you like to come over to my apartment for a bit?"

I took a deep breath. "Sure."

…

Olivia's apartment reminded me of her – well-kept but not ostentatious, and it looked lived-in and comfortable. I sat down on her couch, feet curled up beneath me, clementine that Olivia had grabbed me from the fridge in my hand. we eat the sections of fruit and continue talking, Olivia filling me in on what her job entails, and me trying to explain mine without boring her with the reality that most of it is just crunching numbers.

I'm not shy about my general distrust for the police. A lot of this I've gleaned from my work, learning all of the cases in which the police have profiled, overstepped, or resorted to outright violence. To my surprise, Olivia didn't really disagree.

"I know," she says, "and I see it all the time. I won't lie and say that I didn't think this was genuinely the best way for me to get justice for rape victims, but – I get it. I mean, my own partner's been reprimanded for being a little heavy-handed with a suspect now and then…"

"Detective Stabler?" I asked. "Yeah, he seems like a real piece of work." I paused, worried I'd gone too far.

She looked down and to the side. "We've been partners for over a year now," she said, "but I have to admit: he…scares me sometimes."

I raised my eyebrows. "Did – did something happen?"

She paused. "No," she said, carefully, measured. "I think – I think he wants something to happen, but he's just too afraid his wife would find out."

"But you don't."

"It's hard for me to be with men, especially someone like him," she told me, dropping the last word as if she'd told me too much. "Never mind."

I nodded in acknowledgement, changing the topic to spare her any embarrassment. Then, she actually let me ramble on about statistics for a while, and it's a lot of fun to break things down in a simpler way – I get so used to talking to my coworkers about the gritty details that I sometimes forget about the beauty inherent in the numbers. And I thought Olivia actually got that a little, though I must have gotten carried away, because halfway through talking about what it means to perform a multiple regression, Olivia cut me off by leaning forward and pressing her lips to mine.

I straightened up in surprise, pulling back. It's not like this isn't where I'd hoped the evening would go, deep inside, but a tiny pinch of fear still sat in my chest. I think maybe it always will.

"What is it?" Olivia asked, a bit panicked. "I –"

"Don't worry," I reassured her, and immediately kissed back. The kiss remained on the surface for a moment or two before her tongue pushed its way into my mouth. She tasted like vodka and cranberry juice, and I literally couldn't kiss her fast enough. Her hands found their way to the sides of my face, her thumb stroking my cheek gently.

"Hey," she said, softly, sweetly. "Hey, hey. It's going to be okay."

Only then did I realize that I'd been crying.

"Okay," she whispered. "It's all right. We can do this another time. Hey. It's too soon, it's okay."

I took a deep breath. "Thanks, Olivia."

…

I took a cab home around two, falling asleep as soon as I got home for the first time since it happened. I woke up to a text from Detective Benson. call me, it said. it's important.

Yawning, I sat up in bed and dialed the phone.

"Hey," Detective Benson said.

"What's going on?" I asked, heart beating faster.

"It's the priest," she told me apologetically. "He changed his mind. He wants to go to trial."

"What?" I asked. "Is he fucking delusional? He killed her!"

"I know," she said, "But he's now claiming that he did it for religious reasons, saving her soul, whatever, and it got out of hand. That it was rough sex, but she agreed because she knew how important it was. And that her death was an accident."

"Olivia, that doesn't make any sense," I insisted. "She would never sleep with a man. Never. She's known since she was gay since she was twelve. She was sure about it. She was proud of it. She wouldn't try to 'fix herself' by having rough sex with a man. That's some shit I would do, when I was still coming to terms with things, but not her." The last sentence had slipped out almost without my noticing, but Olivia didn't comment.

"I get it," she said. "It's ludicrous. But his lawyer must have told him he had a chance if he took this to trial."

"So I'll have to testify."

"You'll have to testify about seeing him at her appearance and anything he said to her. I'm going to need your coworkers, too. Especially the girl that found Mariana."

"Tori," I said.

"Can you talk to her for me? I know it's tough after everything else."

"She's eighteen, Olivia."

"Please. I wouldn't be asking if we didn't have to."

"Okay. I'll talk to you soon."

I sat on my bed, breathing shallow. I thought about testifying in open court, about how the case would become even more high-profile, about how everyone would most definitely assume some things about me. I thought about Mariana and how her name would be even more dragged through the mud. I thought about all the people who would take Father Matthew's side, more hate mail delivered to our office, all of it.

And I thought about Tori.

It was Sunday, so ordinarily I wouldn't see her until the next day. She deserved better than me just springing this on her at work, though.

I dialed the phone.

"Hey, what's up?" she asked. She sounded tired.

"I wondered if you were free for coffee. My treat," I said.

"Um, okay," she agreed.

"We'll go somewhere close to your dorm," I promised, "I don't want you to have to go out of your way or anything."

We met at a café near her campus.

"What's going on?" Tori asked. "Not that, like, I don't appreciate it, but I feel like something must be up."

"I need to ask you to do something," I admitted. "I know I initially said there wasn't going to be a trial for Mariana, but things have changed, and we all need to testify."

"Okay," she said right away. "I've never testified in court before, but I'll do it."

I sat back in surprise. "Tori…"

"It's okay," she told me. "I'm okay. Of course I'd testify. Of course I want to help."

"The thing is, honey, that we're going to face some backlash. That some people are going to agree with Father Matthew, believe his side. That some people are going to try to smear us, you know. Maybe make some accusations about why we're defending her."

"Because she's our coworker," Tori said.

"Tori, what I mean is –"

She laughed a little. "I know what you mean."

"What makes you so okay with this?"

She snorted. "Who do you think opened up all that hate mail in the first place and got it to you guys? I've read my fair share of what these people think. I can handle it."

She shrugged. "Besides, I just feel like I'm used to it."

"What do you mean?"

"People used to say things to me, when I was little. I got pretty accustomed to it." She raised an eyebrow. "Mariana and I would talk about that sometimes, actually. She said the same things happened to her. Worse, probably."

My stomach sank. Mariana tried not to talk about those things with me. She almost always put a positive spin on her sexuality, an optimistic outlook. Was it all for me?

I regained a little composure. "I'm glad you were able to talk about it," I said.

"Yeah," she agreed, "and whether it's true for me or not, you know, I don't know. It doesn't really matter, I guess."

"Well, thanks for being so incredibly supportive, hon," I said. "I appreciate it a lot. You're incredible."

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Yeah."

"Were you in love with Mariana?"


End file.
